Some Sight Seeing

Deb woke up Tuesday morning feeling a little better. She had kept taking pain meds during the night and that helped her sleep better. Once we were up and breakfasted, she felt ready to do something.
We decided to visit a wood worker who does artistic boxes from tropical woods. His work is beautiful.
Check out his site at: Biesanz Wood Working
And he has been working to re-forest Costa Rica. We looked up his address on the internet and went to the front desk to get a taxi.
Taking a taxi to a shop seems pretty simple. (Insert mocking laughter) Unless you are in San Jose. It seems that streets are unmarked, buildings don't have numbers displayed, and even taxi drivers call for directions. According to legend many directions refer to landmarks that have disappeared over the years, but all of the locals know where they used to be.
We got three different addresses for this place, all of them ended with something like, 'then drive 500 meters past the old church...' The distance ranged from 300 to 800 meters, and the actual church sat at a five way intersection.
But we got there.
The place has a nice front room filled with displays of beautiful wood working. I wanted to touch everything because it was so beautiful. Then we were offered a tour of the back lot, which had been an old dump. They have reforested it with tropical and medicinal plants. Just out the back door, they have a slice of rainforest . They have specimens of a wide variety of plants including a spiny palm tree. Our guide explained that the fruit of this tree is only found in Costa Rica and he likes it very much. He was very concerned when I got close to it. I spotted a huge spider and wanted a picture. As I maneuvered around the tree, he was really worried that I might brush up against the spines. I believe that the spines have barbs on them, and I would have had a trip to the hospital to get them out. But no harm done. Then we got a tour of the work shop.
I have read about techniques of making boxes and green turned bowls. But they have raised this to a new level. They have a room filled with partially turned blanks that are curing, waiting to be turned into finished bowls. Some of these are more than ten years old. In addition, they make boxes and other things all out of tropical wood. They are careful to only use fallen wood, because so many species of hard wood have been depleted. They handed us a piece of ironwood so that we could feel the density of wood that doesn't float. The workshop is a place where production of wood objects occurs. It was dusty and filled with ugly powerful machines, and pieces of wood going from chunks to finished silky smooth items. I loved it.
We bought ourselves a couple of little items. They will be shipped for us, and we are anticipating getting them next week, at home.
Deb had another session at the dentist that afternoon.